MORI polling chief Bob Worcester gives Michael Howard some advice about how to lift the Tories from the electoral doldrums.

Who would have thought it? A united Tory Party? Well what do you know.

And with Michael Howard as the unifying leader? Not likely, but it looks a done deal.

Michael Howard, the right person at the right place at the right time.

The Conservatives - at least the 165 in the House of Commons if not the constituency members who are whingeing about missing a further bloodletting contest - have woken up to the realisation that they've been flat-lining for 11 years.

The party has been stuck at 31 per cent plus or minus three points with the odd exception both up and down, since "black", or "white", Wednesday.

It took 18 years for Labour to get out of the wilderness, reaching its nadir under Michael Foot.

He proved my maxim that the core vote for Labour is circa 30 per cent (he got 28.5 per cent in the 1983 general election).

Similarly the core vote for the Tories is circa 30 per cent (John Major got 31 per cent in 1997).

And the core vote for the other lot (Libs, Lib Dems, SDP, Greens, Nats, and so on) is just over 20 per cent, leaving only about 20 per cent who are the floating voters.

The last poll, remember, under IDS had them at just 31 per cent. That means that the Tories need to get half - half - of all the floating voters at the next election to break into hung-parliament territory, and nearly three in four to form the next government.

Not likely.

The opposition has been making much of Michael Howard's status as the most right-wing home secretary in living memory (before Blunkett).

Yet that was the period when the Conservatives regained what two decades ago I regarded as their invincible lead over Labour as the party having the best policy on crime among those who said crime was among the most important issues which would assist in determining their vote at the election.

Our figures suggest that he wasn't unpopular in the country, just in his party, which is what led him to run last among those standing in 2001 to lead the Conservatives.

Speaking of which, there's a rumour about that Michael Portillo voted against himself in the second round of the leadership contest in 2001. Interesting, especially if you recall that in the final round the vote was Ken Clarke 59, Iain Duncan Smith 54, Michael Portillo 53.

The rules said that when the candidates got down to three, the top two would go through to the constituencies for the vote of the membership.

In other words, if one Tory MP, just one, had voted for Portillo instead of IDS, the two to go forward would have been either Clarke or Portillo, not IDS, and Iain would not have become leader, and one or the other of the more moderate one-nation Tories would have been leader these past two years.

And if it's true that Portillo really voted against himself, he would have voted for Ken, and if he'd voted for himself instead, the result would have been 58 for Clarke, and 54 each for IDS and Michael. Wonder then how this curious system would have coped.

First things first Michael, get yourself a broadly-based Shadow Cabinet and a new party chairman, keep preaching from the pulpit in the centre of the political spectrum, and see your share in the polls rise.

Not over 40 maybe, but up off the floor, and that'll be the beginning of the recovery of the Conservative Party. About time, too.